PGP Encryption Creator Phil Zimmermann Joins Startpage.com

Startpage.com is proud to announce Phil Zimmermann will spearhead its product innovation and crypto-development

The Hague, The Netherlands – June 5th, 2018 – Startpage.com is proud to announce that Phil Zimmermann has joined the company to spearhead its product innovation and crypto-development.

“It is an honor to have Phil Zimmermann, an encryption legend, work with us,” said Startpage.com CEO Robert Beens. “Not only is he one of the brightest minds in security and cryptography today. He truly cares about human rights and privacy.”

Zimmermann is best known as the creator of Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), encryption software he designed in the 1990’s to fight government surveillance. PGP scrambles data, making it unreadable without the right credentials or “key”.

Beens said Zimmermann will advise the company on its current search engine product, but his main focus will be development of the company’s next-generation PGP-encrypted email service.

“I decided to join Startpage.com because they are ideologically aligned on privacy issues. They really care. And they make products everyone can use,” Zimmermann said. “A few years back I stopped using PGP on Apple Mail because it was never compatible with current MacOS versions. Creating a web-based PGP-compatible product that I can use on my laptop and mobile devices solves that problem.”

In addition to his work at Startpage.com, Zimmermann currently teaches cryptography at Delft University of Technology’s Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science in the Netherlands. He was also the co-founder and Chief Scientist of Silent Circle, a company that develops products and solutions to detect and prevent cyber threats and provide secure mobile communications.

Zimmermann has received numerous technical and humanitarian awards for his pioneering work in cryptography, including the Norbert Wiener Award and the US Privacy Champion Award. He has also been inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame, the Cyber Security Hall of Fame and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate (Docteur Honoris Causa) from the Université Libre de Bruxelles in 2016.

About Startpage.com

Startpage.com is the world’s first and most trusted private search engine. Startpage.com is based in Europe, outside the reach of US data collection mandates and never tracks or logs user personal information.